


I carry your heart here with me

by Werepirechick



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous Relationships, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Could be platonic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Homestuck ending theory, Hurt/Comfort, Kinda, Memory Loss, Multi, Recovered Memories, Reincarnation, beta kids OT4 - Freeform, it could be romantic, mostly just me looking for an excuse to try writing an idea, they're like jedi force ghosty things, which ever floats your shipping boat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-22
Updated: 2016-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-28 10:32:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6325522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Werepirechick/pseuds/Werepirechick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave's first memories are of bright blues, oranges, and shades of black.<br/>Always there, always comforting him. His three best friends.</p><p>Then he realizes no one else sees them, just him.</p><p>He's the only one who can see the three ghosts following him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I carry your heart here with me

**Author's Note:**

> So, had an idea at two in the morning and stayed up till four thirty writing it cause i have No Self Control.  
> I needed to get back into this fandom anyways.

Dave's first memories are of bright blues, oranges, and shades of black.

They were only shapes then, indistinct because of perception, but they were always there. Surrounding the edges of his vision, darting in and out of view. It didn't matter what time of day it was or where he was that moment, the fluttering shapes would follow him.

If he cried, they were there, pressing close to give comfort. The other, the man he'd call Bro one day, was there as well; but not as quick or as constant. It was always the sky blue, vibrant orange, and swirling black that were.

His first and closest companions.

 

O o O o O o O o

 

Dave is three, still small but growing fast, and his three best friends are still with him.

The blue one is another boy, but he has dark hair and paler skin. His hood is long and follows his lazy flying around the ceiling. Dave loves the hood; he finds it hilarious the things the other boy does with it. Gusts of un-feelable wind whip it into shapes, bending and twisting wildly. The other boy never speaks, but that's fine. None of Dave's friends do.

The orange one, she is a girl with softly white hair that halo's her tan face. Her orange dress drapes between her legs while she sits cross legged in the air. She is the one who watches Dave the most, the other two distracted by other things sometimes, and Dave asks her most if something is safe to do or eat. Her confirmations or denials are silent gestures of her hands and head.

The last one, the black one, is another girl; whose hair floats madly about her head, long and wild with little white dog ears poking out from the tangles. Her dress is long and flowing, watching her fly around is like a small cloud of dark shades. She's darker skinned than everyone; even Dave, and her smiles stand out all the more for it. She and the blue one, they're always smiling at Dave; wide and toothy.

Bro thinks Dave's friends are cool too, tells him at the dinner table every night as Dave describes what they'd all played that day. Sure, none of them respond to his words verbally, but they make lots of hand gestures to make up for it.  
Bro doesn't talk too much either, so there isn't a ton of difference.

Dave talks enough for them all anyways.

 

O o O o O o O o

 

Dave is six and realizing no one else can see his friends.

He goes to school now, kindergarten, and he's tried introducing his friends to his classmates. But none of them can see his friends, who still float close by around Dave. His classmates tell him to stop making up stories, or to save the games until recess; there's no one there.

Dave gets told off by his teacher for causing a fight over imaginary friends. He insists they're right there, if they'd just look they're right there-

The teacher calls Dave's Bro, who comes and picks him up early.

Bro doesn't talk to Dave the whole way home, and Dave is just fine with that. His friends are clustered around his car-seat and ghosting their fingers over his clenched knuckles. The orange one runs the tips of her fingers across his scalp, while the blue and black ones lean their heads close to his.

Dave decides he doesn't need other friends at school, he has three great ones.

Even when Bro talks with him later that night, as he's being tucked into bed, telling him that maybe it's time to let his imaginary friends go; Dave shakes his head no. He has three best friends, and even if no one believes him, it's fine.

 

O o O o O o O o

 

Dave is nine and he's stopped talking to his friends.

He'd kept at it, for a whole year and a half the beginning of school, before he started noticing the looks people gave him. Whispered conversations between Bro and his teachers. Words like 'illness' and 'psychiatrist' catching his attention. Dave uses the big encyclopedia in the classroom, after hearing those words, to look it up.

Orange points at it, the word 'psychiatrist', and Dave feels very upset.

A psychiatrist is for people with serious problems. Dave doesn't have a problem.  
Unless he does. No one can see his friends, not even Bro.

Dave doesn't like the things people say about him; his classmates excluding him from games, telling him to go play with his imaginary friends instead, calling him weird...

Dave stops telling people about his friends. He stops talking to them in front of anyone. He stops talking to them period.

Slowly, the teachers and Bro stop looking worried about him. His classmates forget about his odd behavior for the most part, mostly only bothering him about his sunglasses now. That's fine though, he can handle that.

Dave keeps on not talking his friends, the blue, orange, and black ones. He plays with kids his age, does his school work, and pointedly doesn't look at his invisible friends who still follow him.

Dave pretends even at home, that he can't see them smiling at him and trying to get his attention. Dave is thankful for the prescription sunglasses, they help hide his glances at them.

Sometimes the blue and black kids, which is what they are being not more than a few years older than him, look sad when he ignores their playful invites. The orange girl looks contemplative, but doesn't ask him to look at them anymore. Maybe she understands.

Dave doesn't acknowledge them again for years.

 

O o O o O o O o

 

Dave is eleven and hiding behind his school building next to the cafeteria dumpsters.

His sunglasses are long gone; probably back in the locker room. He doesn't care, his eye hurts too much to think about how much it'll cost to replace them or how much trouble he'll be in for getting into another fight.

His invisible friends, because that's what they are even after all this time, coo soundlessly at him. Their concerned gazes and worried hands brush over his bruised skin. Dave bites his lip and cries just as soundlessly as their words of comfort.

He's hurt and not one of his school friends stood up for him today. He'd been outnumbered and caught by surprise, but even the kids he'd spent years with abandoned him to the boys looking to fight with him.

Dave knows a lot of words now, enough that he doesn't need orange to point them out in the encyclopedia anymore. Including the word faggot.

Dave's eye is swelling shut and his split knuckles ache fiercely.

His left is blurry, but his right sees fine, and he meets the blank white eyes of his three friends for the first time in years. They smile sadly at him and surround him in his most well-known colors; he can't feel their hands like a breathing person's, but they're there enough that he takes comfort in them.

Their mouths move and nothing comes out, but Dave can catch the words fine.  
He mouths back 'I’m sorry' to them, 'I’m sorry i didn't pay attention to you. I’m sorry i pretended not to see you'.

All three of them shake their heads and wind their arms around him. They forgive him, they'll always forgive him.

Dave cries until he can't and then goes home, three pairs of hands ghosting around him offering sympathetic smiles to Dave's red eyed winces at the bright sunlight.

He picks up where he left off with them, years ago, but discretely this time. No one will know, just him and them.

 

O o O o O o O o

 

Dave is thirteen and he starts remembering.

It starts with vague dreams, scenes and events banished by daylight. He rarely recalls enough to even tell to his friends.

Then they become more vibrant, depth added to the visions; he knows the places he sees at night, he knows them so well, but he can't place them.  
Until he can and then he remembers almost all of it.

Dave is shaking at three AM and his three invisible friends, John, Rose, Jade, run their hands across his back as he curls on the carpet floor.

Dave remembers them all. Their names, their friendship, their Game...  
He remembers who they were. Who they all were.

Thirteen years old, planet destroyers and gods of a new universe. The best of friends, the closest of companions.

They'd died together, multiple times.

He'd died so, so many times. They all had.

Now he's here, they all are, and he has no idea why. He remembers only so far, then white. He and Rose, they'd blown up the core and then there'd been only a brief flash of her and him as resurrected gods. What'd happen after?

He asks her, he asks them all, but they shake their heads. They don't know either. None of them know why they're dead and he's alive.

Dave stays on the floor until his Bro comes knocking to get him up for school.

 

O o O o O o O o

 

Dave is fifteen and slowly the pieces are falling into place in his mind.

He remembers more every year, about their collective past lives. John, Rose, and Jade remember more every time he does. They're tied to his memories for some reason. Its bullshit, but it's not something they can do anything about.

So he lives his life, deals with normal things while spending time with three ghosts following him around.

Dave picked up sign language not long after he started remembering, they all use it now. It's a lot more effective than gestures and jazz hands had been. It's almost the same as when they were all corporeal, goofing around like the kids they were.

Granted, Dave is still a pariah socially speaking. He went to high school with a rep that followed him from middle school; the weird eyed kid that talked to himself. Dave had been careful, but not careful enough apparently. He doesn't care; his three dead friends are all he needs.

Besides, even with the douche-bags that try and pick a brawl with him, not many people can contend with him physically now that he's picked up sword fighting again. Memories of the skill level he'd once had certainly encouraged him, but it was mostly for the need of self-defense. Even minus his katana, Dave can throw down better than anyone.

Dave spends every day itching for time to move forwards; he can feel that they're almost at the answer of their situation. His dreams are strong and vivid now, offering more information every time they appear.

The other three agree, soon they'll get their answers. The big mystery of their incorporeal forms will be solved and...

Well, Dave isn't sure what they'll do after they find out. A part of him hopes it'll give them their physical bodies back. They're all great, every single one of them, but formless/silent friends can't fulfill the need for warm bodied companions.

Besides, he misses the sound of Rose's quiet hums and John's laughter and Jade's loud exclamations. Even if they were never actually alive again, he wants that at least; their voices.

It's stupid that he misses them when they've always been with him, right from his first breath.

Until he's dreamt up their ending though, he's stuck wishing for his old time powers. He wants to get this done with. He wants his friends back, for things to be like they were.

Rose tells him, smooth hand signs flowing, that some things never change no matter the universe. His eagerness to get things done all at once brings back memories from their time in the Game, when there were as many as a few hundred of him everywhere at once.

Jade is impatient, even more so than John, but even she says they'll just have to wait for Dave's dumb dreams to come through for them. Nothing will make it go faster; it'll get here when it's meant to. Their ending.

 

O o O o O o O o

 

Dave is sixteen and standing on the roof of his apartment building and he finally, finally knows.

He remembers, they all do now, the gamble at the end of a three year journey for a new and complete universe. They'd finished the Game, beaten every villain it'd thrown at them and now they got to claim their prize.

Catch though, had been that they'd have to die for what felt like the millionth time. Well, not die exactly, but giving up their forms and personalities for a couple billion years was close enough.

Their universe was new, unfinished and empty. There was nothing for them to settle in yet, just empty space everywhere.

Rose had searched for the right choice, and none of them had liked what had come up. They would have to lay the ground work for things to go forwards. That meant becoming their aspects in every sense until everything was complete.

The remaining trolls, only a few now, would have to add themselves to the mix of things too. Their aspects would help the universe to be filled with planets with vast diversity. They weren't keen on the idea of ceasing to exist for eons either.

None of them were, but they'd come this far; why give up in the face of the final obstacle?

So they let go, dissolved into abstract concepts of the universe and let nature take its course.

The big bang, the creation of the solar systems inside the Milky Way, earth becoming fertile, evolution, and so forth. They all remained dormant until time caught up with the moment they'd stopped existing as sentient beings.

Dave's sixteenth birthday wasn't that day, it was a while after it. Some Tuesday in July, Dave could remember the date if he wanted to, but at that moment he didn't care.

Dave was the key, he'd been the essence of time and now it was up to him to bring them all back into reality with him. He'd completed the task of reaching the age they'd all died at, why he'd needed to he didn't remember, he just had.

Now, all he had to do was die again; death number one million and one.

He shuffled his Nike shoes off to the side, and stepped towards the ledge that came up to his waist. John, Rose, and Jade hovered right beside him; silent as always, but expressive enough to make up for it.

Dave climbed up onto the ledge and let his legs hang out into the warm summer air. He slowly took off his glasses and placed them beside him, squinting into the sharp light of the sunset. John placed his hand over Dave's, Jade copying on the other side. Rose wrapped her arms around his neck from the back.

All he had to do was jump, thirty story drop down, and then they would all be together again.

Time had needed to complete its run before he could appear as a person again, and now for the rest of the players he needed to finish the loop. Match one end of the circle to the other.

His sock covered feet hung over the empty air and Dave licked his lips nervously. For a moment he let himself doubt it. Doubt that this would bring them all back, doubt that the three people holding onto him were real, doubt that he wasn't insane.

For one moment, he did.

Then he stood up, drawing his legs beneath him with a fighter's grace, and stood up on the ledge. Wind ruffled his bleach blonde hair, and the sun stung his eyes. Three pairs of hands held onto him. They were with him all the way.

The space below him yawned, wide and terror inducing,

and Dave jumped.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

“Welcome back, Dave. We missed you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Like it? Dislike it? lemme know.  
> I don't actually think HS will end like this, but it was fun to write! I was mostly testing out my skills again with my dumb idea.  
> (it doesn't make a ton of sense, but i like it anyways; fight me)


End file.
